What are the effects of rent control, both good and bad?
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The good effects of rent control are short term. You can quickly give relief to people who might very well lose their housing otherwise. This can prevent cascading economic problems.
The bad effects of rent control are long term. You have now put your thumb on the market forces that would usually have caused new housing to have been created. Now the original problem you were trying to fight — too little housing which caused prices to rise — becomes entrenched.
Another bad problem with rent control is that it is almost impossible to undo. Once people start depending on rent control, there are both legal and moral problems to taking it away again. That is why many places that experimented with rent control in the 1970s and then abandoned it after a few years are *still* grappling with the consequences 50 years later.
About the only real way to make rent control work is to put a time limit on it from the very start, make this time limit damn near impossible to move, and immediately move to solve the underlying problem by either encouraging people to move out of the area or encourage lots of new development.
I am unaware of anyone ever actually making it work, but I’m sure if there are good examples, somebody will let me know 🙂
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